


Luminous

by out-here (tacroy)



Category: McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-11-17 23:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11279340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacroy/pseuds/out-here
Summary: Griffin didn’t grow up in Texas, but he’s used to Austin, now. Used to the humidity that rolls in when it finally feels like showing up sometime in the first four months of the year. Used to the sky—it’s bigger here, it really is, he remembers texting Travis late one evening; they’re not kidding—the way the clouds hunch in the heat, like dogs panting under porches, or flutter away from a storm rolling in.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i was blessed to grow up in texas, and blessed more to leave; i lived in the bay area for a few years after that. i'm starting graduate school tomorrow and for some reason i couldn't stop thinking about my homes, the texture of them, the temperature and the mood. i may write more of this, but i may not quite feel this way again.

Griffin didn’t grow up in Texas, but he’s used to Austin, now. Used to the humidity that rolls in when it finally feels like showing up sometime in the first four months of the year. Used to the sky—it’s bigger here, it really is, he remembers texting Travis late one evening; they’re not kidding—the way the clouds hunch in the heat, like dogs panting under porches, or flutter away from a storm rolling in.

The heat will bake itself into you if you’re not careful. Huntington had four seasons but Texas has two: a brief, solid winter that sends the natives into the backs of their closets for hats and scarves, and nine pure months of brain-melting summer. He remembers seeing the bluebonnets for the first time, on his way out to the airport, lining the shoulders of 183 like spring herself had risen up alongside him. He remembers sticking to the car seat too many times to count. He remembers when Justin visited the first time and drove them around and parked _not_ under a tree, and Griffin heckled him mercilessly until Justin said, “Listen, chucklefuck, I’m not a native, unlike you apparently fucking are,” and Griffin’d had to take a moment for that. Had to look at up at those clouds and think about how they shadowed his home.

=

Nick didn’t grow up in California, and he may never be used to it. There’s too much of to fit in his mind, really. The Bay is vast when viewed from above—he always looks out the window at the end of trips and watches it flow and flow—but easy to compartmentalize when you can see just the Gate from your balcony, or the channel from way up in the de Young tower, or the estuaries from the 5. He’s often cold and probably shouldn’t have the hairstyle he does with this wind, but he loves to throw chips to seagulls and hike up nineteen hills just to go three blocks.

It’s something being young in San Francisco. He sits on the roof most days to escape his tiny apartment and buries his head in his work; clips in his earbuds and edits and Skypes and loves being able to glance up over the lip of his laptop and see the sunset, ridiculously picturesque, glinting over Mount Tam. He remembers the only time he walked all the way down Market, from the Ferry Building to the Castro. He’d never do it again, because it was hell, because everything past the Orpheum genuinely scared him, because he didn’t even live along that diagonal. But it was a vivisection of a living city in a purer, truer way than he’d ever seen. So, so many homeless, so many street performers, so many men in dove gray suits and women wielding their Neiman Marcus bags like shields, so many dirty riotous families and taxis and swearing bicyclists and beyond it all the continuous rumble of the F-Market as it vomited out tourists and travellers. Exhaustion drove him to try Epsom salts for the first time that night, like some kind of old, and he’d ripped a joint rewatching NGE and towelling off his feet. He slept like a baby, but his dreams were a cacophony of sound against buildings and sharp sunlight against the sea waves.

=

When they meet, it is in the middle; all things between people are. Griffin can’t remember Nick’s last name the first time they record a video together. Their first E3 is unremarkable; Griffin is tired and Nick is too keyed up to absorb anything in front of him, even if it is a McElroy, in the flesh. _Hindsight_ , Griffin thinks, watching Nick tip back a Shiner in a bar out on South Congress. He can’t identify when this kid started growing on him, but he did, like the kind of ivy that, given years, tears down walls.

“I hate that you’re here in July,” Griffin says. He’s turning a glass of wine in his palm; in college, he never thought he’d be able to taste the difference between a California and a Washington chardonnay. “It’s the hell time. You’re not going to tan. Your flesh is just gonna start smoldering.”

“Sexy,” says Nick, because of course he does. He’s not even looking at Griffin. He’s staring around the bar—probably taking one star off his Yelp review for every TV playing NASCAR. Negative four stars, then. “Let’s get out of here.”

Griffin takes them to Zilker. They wander up to the river and find an incredibly uncomfortable rock to lean against. He was probably too buzzed to drive, but maybe the feeling in the pit of his stomach was something else. When Nick’s arm brushes his, yeah, there’s that feeling, like a huge fish splashing around in a tiny pond, _fuck_. Griffin feels fourteen again, dumb around the pretty girl with the big brown eyes, when he has to move his arm away to keep his brain from yelling.

Nick is saying something characteristically stupid about Pokemon Go when Griffin sees the fireflies. They rise up from the short length of field before them, luminous, and Nick’s mouth snaps shut, then open again in awe. Griffin watches him smile, watches his legs straighten as he tilts forward. “Oh, wow,” Nick says. Jesus, Griffin feels like he’s in some stupid anime, because he can see the reflection of the fireflies in Nick’s huge eyes. “Griffin, look. _Look_.”

Griffin’s looking.

=


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh good, apparently im writing slow burn :|

Time is layers, new cells, blossoms. The post oaks turn dirt yellow with fall and a coyote slinks across the lawn in front of his house at 1 AM, in the middle of a protracted PUBG match. Two moon eyes peer through the front window, reflecting some car down the road, and Griffin squawks, real undignified, shrill into a momentary silence in the chat.

“Fuck! What the— _shit_ —” Nick’s yelling. There’s a spatter of M16 fire and Nick’s icon blinks into a skull. Griffin tries to catch his breath and take cover but he’s hit, and Nick’s not there to resurrect him. The screen goes red, then black.

“What the _fuck_ just happened?” Simone shrieks. She covers Pat and Justin while they dash for the yellow house nearby; Griffin’s clicked the _spectate_ button almost automatically, heart still pounding.

“Fuck, sorry, I saw a—a—there was something outside,” Griffin says, but there’s too much going on now; Russ gets pinned behind a wall and Simone is trying to get to Pat for more ammo and Allegra finds a car and everyone is talking at the same time, trying to figure it out. 

Skype chat bounces.

_N: u ok?_

Griffin gets up and goes to the window. The yard seems empty, until he sees the fireflies drifting up in a line, in a wake.

He goes back to his desk and says:

_G: yeah sorry_

_G: there was a coyote i think_

_N: woah dude yikes_

_G: its fine it was just outside but their eyes flash like cats and im a fucking chicken_

_N: oh i know i was there when you played fnaf2_

_N: idk how you live alone_

_G: ?_

_N: well youre afraid of_

_N: fuckin_

_N: everything_

_N: dont u need someone to protect u_

_G: i have cecil_

_G: the attack cat_

_N: so fierce_

_G: he’ll fuck up a bug tho_

_N: oh i believe you_

_N: i couldnt live alone_

Griffin types, _i dont want to_ , pauses, deletes it, and says:

_G: its not so bad_

_N: if u say so_

“Well, that went to shit,” Griffin hears Simone say. “Try again?”

“I should go to bed,” Griffin says. “Y’all go on without me. It’s one here.”

“It’s three here but you don’t see me going to sleep,” Nick says.

“I have self-preservation skills, though,” Griffin says, laughing. “Have fun.”

He logs off to a chorus of _byes_ and closes all nine million of the programs running on his poor machine and shuts it down. He’s brushing his teeth and scrolling through his mentions when Nick texts:

_hey i was thinking abt that time i visited for no reason_

_idk i just went to the roof and i thought abt the fireflies. u should ship some to sf i think theyd go w the vibe here too_

Griffin scrubs at his teeth and types back one-handed:

_yeah dude ill throw some in the mail_

Nick’s “...” lingers, then disappears. Griffin puts down his phone spits and there’s a trail of red in the blue foam. He didn’t realize he was brushing so hard.

He’s getting into bed when Nick texts something so long that it won’t fit on the lock screen. Griffin opens his phone. Nick says:

_idk i feel like im living alone for some reason right now. i love my roommate so much, u know that, hes insane and hilarious but ?? idk idk i feel like time dilates when im trying to go to sleep and wake up like its a fuckin. idk. coordinate plane and theres nothing in it. It just goes on forever. and i can eat breakfast for an hour and take a shit for an hour and theres nothing stopping me and i want there to be something stopping me. but not like stopping me, just like_

_…_

Griffin barely has time to think about the message before the second text comes in. Nick says:

_just like a structure. a fuckin. pair of arms. idk_

Griffin replies:

_yeah dude. being single sucks._

Nick says:

_lol_

_yeah_

_sorry if that was weird_

_anyway gnight_

Five minutes pass before Griffin realizes he’s still staring at his phone. He puts it down and turns over and shoves his face into a pillow and breathes out, hot, squeezing his eyes shut. It hurts in his bones to stretch out across the bed like this. 

Distantly, the coyote howls, and he knows he’s imagining it because without his glasses his sight simply isn’t that good, but he sees the fireflies rise up in front of the window, and maybe this is a dream. They form a shape, a circle, a sphere; their light overtakes him. The dream goes on, but a corner of his mind keeps thinking, _structure_ , and when he wakes up the next morning, he times how long it takes him to get up and eat breakfast. 

_Twenty minutes,_ he texts Nick.

Nick says: _?_

Griffin says: _thats how long it took me to take a shower and have breakfast_

Nick says: _oh_

_lol_

_thanks_

_ill get a move on_

_ur good for me_

Griffin says: _i know_

=


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was written entirely on august 4th & 5th, 2017, in light of nick turning out to be... horrible. so a bit of a tonal shift from the previous two chapters, let's say.

Griffin gets hideously lost taking them to see the Perseids.

Everyone is in town. Russ rents a clunky van and Pat buys flame decals for it at the Dollar Store and everyone follows Griffin, who gets distracted yelling at Nick, who is being completely wrong about stealth mechanics, and they end up out near Bastrop, maybe, fuck, he’s not sure—nobody’s phones are working, because telecom execs still haven’t gotten the message about ranchers needing 4G just as much as city slickers. Griffin steers his Volvo off the pavement, Russ right behind, and when he turns the key and the lights off it’s like everything is shutting down and the silence of the world opens up before them.

“It’s really fuckin’ dark,” Tara says into the quiet.

Justin snorts and then laughs. Behind them, Simone and Russ and Pat and Allegra fall out of their separate van doors at almost the same time, and Simone trips and screams. Nick is out of the car in a flash and next to her, holding her elbow and laughing, and Griffin feels envy lodge in his throat, sharp and startling.

They spread blankets out across the verge. There are cows in the field far off under a stand of pecan trees, sleeping. Tara passes a blunt around. Allegra tells them about the constellations. She can point out almost every one of them. “I wish you had one of those lasers they tell you not to point at planes,” Justin says. He’s got his hands cupped behind his head and is laying on an atrocious lime green blanket with his knees up. “I keep thinking I know which one you’re talking about but it turns out I’m just fucking blind.”

“You’ll get your night vision,” Allegra laughs. She’s splayed out next to Simone and Pat with a big star map open on Pat’s chest. “This was all I did as a kid. God, I was such a nerd. Although I did get laid on an astronomy field trip one time in high school so that was totally worth it.”

“Definitely not a nerd anymore,” Russ says. “Professional video gamer.”

“I mean, are you a nerd if you get paid to do nerd stuff?” says Tara. “Wait, that was a stupid question.”

Griffin’s gone to the outer edge of the group, taking a soft violet blanket with him. He knows what it means to have influence, and when he’s with this many people he likes, he tries not to take over. But he tries to stay himself, too. It’s a tight balance between being genuine and considerate. He thinks about that for a few minutes while he looks into the sky. Where do you find your true self? In the words you say, or in the words you think you should say, or even in the words you think you should think?

“Mind if I join you?” Nick says.

He lays a red blanket down between Griffin and the rest of the group. It gives Griffin a weird feeling for a moment, like he’s being isolated. Nick lays himself down and Griffin can’t help but watch the lines of him, the folds of his clothes and the way his body displaces the grass. He considers, unexpectedly, the weight of Nick’s body; what it would feel like to know that weight. He knows he’s blushing and hope it’s dark enough that nobody can tell.

“Alright, the only constellation I know is Corona Borealis,” Griffin says. He points up, trying to angle his hand to Nick’s probable line of gaze, at the eight-star crown above them. “It’s that circle one, with the big star in the bottom of the curve. You see?”

“Maybe,” Nick says. Griffin keeps himself from looking over and puts his hand down. Everyone else has stopped talking. There’s a flicker and another smoke cloud as Pat passes the blunt to Simone.

“I got obsessed with this one,” Griffin says. He doesn’t know why he’s talking, really, but he can’t stop. “I guess because it was the only one I could ever find. It’s supposed to be Ariadne’s crown.”

“Dionysus’s wife,” Nick supplies.

“Yeah,” Griffin says. “Yeah. My favorite version of it is as the light in the labyrinth. Theseus uses it to escape after he kills the minotaur.”

“A crown of light,” Nick says. The words seem weighty in his mouth, like would be turning them over in his hands if he could hold them. “A crown of light to help you escape.”

“Yeah,” Griffin says. They’re quiet for a while, and then Griffin goes on, softer. “But the story is that Dionysus gave the crown to Ariadne because he was in love with her, and she was in love with Theseus, and so she gave the crown to him. And Theseus took the crown and defeated the minotaur, and then took Ariadne with him to go home. But he didn’t want to marry her, so he abandoned her on an island. And on his way home, he forgot to change the sails on his ship to white, so when his father, King Aegeus, saw his ship approaching with black sails, he thought his son was dead. And he leapt off a cliff into the sea.”

“Woah,” Nick says. “Holy shit. What happened to the crown?”

“Dionysus put it in the sky,” Griffin says. He reaches up again, automatic, and traces the oval of the constellation. “I don’t remember that part of the story. But I like to think that Ariadne put it up there herself. She saw how it had guided Theseus out of the darkness. And then she saw that no matter how much light you give someone, you can’t guarantee that they’ll ever really leave the darkness.” A firefly comes up across his vision, flickering, luminous. “I think she wanted to get rid of it, because it reminded her of Theseus, and because she thought that maybe it could help. Maybe it could be a warning and a light.”

“A warning light,” Nick says, distant.

“There’s this quote,” Griffin says. He feels embarrassed repeating this; it’s almost too personal. “‘The truth is a beam, a lamp, a star in the dark, an invitation to learn how to become.’”

“What’s that from?”

“I don’t remember,” Griffin lies. 

They fall silent again. More fireflies rise into the sky, mingling with the stars, and Pat shouts and points, spotting the first meteor of the night. Griffin barely sees it. Allegra says it went across Corvus. They keep watching.

The breezes braid across the field like cotton rustling before a big rain. One of the cows turns over, lowing softly, and when Griffin closes his eyes for a moment, the fireflies form Corona Borealis under his eyelids. He imagines the island, the flowering trees, the source of the stream that Theseus tells Ariadne to follow. She walks along the bank of the clear water, plucking fruits, pushing her damp hair off the hot nape of her neck. She fills her amphorae, imagining her wedding, imagining wearing her crown of light and staring into Theseus’s face as they slide into the water together, taking their cleansing nuptial bath. She turns, milk and honey heavy in her arms, and sees the ship a mile from the shore, leaving, black sails curved to gather the wind. The vessels shatter on the ground. The fruit splits, bruised.

There are six more meteors. They find their way back to the city. Nick is the last one Griffin drops off before going home.

“I tried to look up that quote, and I couldn’t find it anywhere,” Nick says. He’s gotten out of the car and is leaning through the passenger window, phone in his hand. Griffin’s eyes can’t quite focus and Nick looks simultaneously closer and further away than he really is. “You don’t remember what it’s from?”

“No, I do,” Griffin says. He looks away from Nick. “I made it up.”

“Oh,” Nick says, surprised. Then he laughs. “That’s amazing. Really?”

“Yeah, shut up,” Griffin says. “Whatever. Go to bed.”

“Alright.” Nick straightens up lazily from the window. “Pop the trunk?”

Griffin tries, but it’s an old car, and the latch gets stuck. He gets out and unlocks the trunk and Nick picks up his messenger bag. 

“See you in a few weeks,” Nick says. He opens his arms and Griffin steps into his embrace, closes his eyes, breathes in. 

“I love when you’re here,” Griffin says into Nick’s neck.

“I love being here,” Nick says, muffled too. He pulls Griffin away gently, lines them up so their noses are an inch from touching. “You’re the light.”

“I don’t know,” Griffin says, remembering the broken fruit. “Did you see all the fireflies?”

“Of course,” Nick says, gentle, and kisses him, just like that.

=

A month later, Justin has to call him and tell him.

Griffin only sends two texts that day. One is his one-sentence reply to Nick’s millions of messages. Nick says: _im so sorry. Ill never do it again. i feel awful. i was wrong. do you still love me? please. tell me what i have to do. you were never meant to know. please. i didn’t mean to hurt you._

Griffin says: _love is not a blank check._

And in response to Chris’s question, Griffin’s other text says: _my advice? fire the fucking creep._

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr at out--here


End file.
